She Stole My Fiancé, So I Married His Enemy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Locked Out

Her mother slaps her in the parking garage, she is fired and locked out, and the drive ends at the gates of the one man she was told to fear.

The rideshare pickup was inside the hotel garage, and my mother found me there before the car did.

She didn't come to comfort me.

She slapped me.

The crack bounced off the concrete walls.

My cheek burned, and I stared at her, too shocked to cry.

"Do you know what you just did?" she said, and straightened her pearls as if I had bent them.

"Richard Winslow signs with my firm next month. Next month, Millicent. And you wrecked his family's party in front of half of Boston."

"Porter cheated on me." My voice shook. "With Bree. She told two hundred people I can't have children."

"Then you should have smiled and handled it privately, like an adult."

I laughed, and it came out broken.

"Like you handled Dad?"

Her face went still.

My father died when I was fourteen, on a wet night on Route 9.

By the end of that week my mother had gone back to work, and she had not slowed down since.

"And the ring? Where is it?"

"In the champagne."

"Four carats, Millicent. And eleven thousand dollars of broken glass that Porter's mother will bill to my office."

"I don't care who she bills."

"I do," my mother said.

She opened the car door.

"Get in. We'll discuss where you're going to live."

"I live with Porter."

I corrected myself in my head.

I lived in a condo that belonged to the Winslows, one I'd moved into after I quit my nonprofit to work at Winslow Hospitality, because Porter said we should build our future in one place.

My phone buzzed in my clutch.

The first message was from Winslow Hospitality HR: Effective immediately your employment is terminated. Do not return to the office.

The second was a photo from our doorman.

My clothes sat in black trash bags on the sidewalk, and the rain was soaking through.

Under it he had written: Miss Millicent, I'm so sorry. Mr. Winslow had the locks changed an hour ago.

An hour ago.

I had been standing in that ballroom, and Bree had been holding the microphone.

They had planned all of it.

I sat down on the curb in a four-hundred-dollar dress and finally cried.

My mother stood over me and looked at her watch.

"You can't stay with me," she said. "Reporters will be outside my building by morning, and you will not make that worse."

"I'm your daughter."

"You're a liability tonight." She said it the way she said everything, in order. "Keir Stroud's mother has offered you a guest suite. Both her sons live on the estate. You'll stay there until this blows over."

I looked up so fast my neck hurt.

"Stroud? Of Stroud Capital?"

"Yes."

"Mom, Porter says he's the devil. Keir Stroud has spent two years trying to bankrupt the Winslows."

"He is a billionaire with a very good gate," she snapped. "That's exactly what you need."

The man by the pillar.

His glass lifted an inch.

Your father would have liked that.

My stomach dropped.

"Was he at the party?"

My mother paused.

It was only a second, but my mother never paused.

"I'll drive you there now," she said. "Someone will collect your things tomorrow."

The drive to Weston took forty minutes, and nobody spoke.

My phone lit up over and over, so I read it with my cheek still stinging.

Porter: Milly, please let me explain.

Porter: Don't talk to anyone tonight. Especially not the press.

Porter: Where are you going?

Not I'm sorry. Not are you okay. Just where are you going.

Then Bree sent a photo.

It was an ultrasound, a gray blur on white paper.

Under it she wrote: Wedding's in six weeks. Porter wants you there. Don't make it weird. xx

I held the power button until the screen went black.

Iron gates rose out of the dark, and behind them a stone house glowed gold between the trees.

My mother didn't get out.

She popped the trunk, even though there was nothing in it but my clutch, and stared straight ahead.

"I'll call you tomorrow," she said.

She wouldn't, and we both knew it.

I climbed out into the rain.

Just before she pulled away, she rolled the window down, and for once her face wasn't arranged.

"Millicent. One more thing."

"What?"

"This wasn't his mother's idea." She glanced up at the house. "Keir Stroud called me from that ballroom before you'd even reached the garage. He asked for you by name."

The window rolled up.

Her taillights went around the bend.

Behind me the iron gates swung open on their own.

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